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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24616852">Stop Time</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mathsthetic/pseuds/mathsthetic'>mathsthetic</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>35MM: A Songfic Series [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>35MM: A Musical Exhibition, Hermitcraft</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Assisted Suicide, Death, Don't read if easily bothered, Don't worry it's not, Everyone Dies: The Movie, Gen, I'm Sorry, Infection, It's implied that respawning was possible, Mumbo dies, Murder, No beta reader but I did torture my friends with clips, Song Used: Stop Time (35MM), Suicide, Vex Boys as Plague Doctors, You Know What You Did, again im sorry, lots of trigger warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 09:56:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,067</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24616852</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mathsthetic/pseuds/mathsthetic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There. Life. (Focus.)<br/>Still life (still focus)<br/>More life. More focus<br/>Hold!</p><p>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfbI63koVno</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>35MM: A Songfic Series [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1779691</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Stop Time</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>They know what they did.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>There. Life. (Focus.)</em>
</p><p>Xisuma watched the world around him, dust filling the air as he crash landed into the dirt. Everything was spinning, but as he slowly stood up it seemed to all be coming together. Memories flooded into the back of his mind. The fun he had in every single world with his friends. His friends...</p><p>
  <em>Still life (still focus)</em>
</p><p>All of them were gone now.</p><p>Biffa and Python caught an infection and died long before and then it just spread like a wildfire through the server. He warned, or at least tried to, but after seeing the sunken eyes of his longtime tea-companion, he knew that the other's wouldn't take this seriously. "We can just respawn, it will be fine," he heard the words through a sickly and drunken tone of the other armored man. "I'll be here before you kn-" But he never respawned. His body sat there, no signs of vital life. His heart had stopped and there were no brain waves under the thick metal of his helmet. Python was in the bed next to him, separated by only a little table with their glasses of water and some medications that the admin through would help them to heal.</p><p>
  <em>More life. More focus</em>
</p><p>If only that is what the pills did.</p><p>To the red species of Creeper, the pills did nothing but worsen his symptoms. The cough got so bad that eventually silver gunpowder came up his throat and his eyes swelled shut. Python begged for his friends not to see him like this, so Xisuma hid the truth from the rest of the server. He hid that the well known friends of the Admin had been injured at all, let alone that Biffa had died from his illness.</p><p>All of this Xisuma saw as he looked at the remains of the building, left behind only for the wild animals and other mobs to take over. Would the zombies take over the land like they had? Would they live their lives as if they were the remains of his friends and loved ones?</p><p>
  <em>Hold!</em>
</p><p>Were they now zombies too?</p><hr/><p>
  <em>Stopped time, captured lights.</em>
</p><p>Eventually everyone died. Respawning didn't work and people were more scared then anything else once they found out the truth. The smell of decay from the human and not-so-human corpses that were laid finally to rest in the impromptu medical tent made the whole town reek of death. People moved away and the clumsy death messages that would plague the chat became almost none. But, of course, they all still died. Tinfoil Chef caught the infection and in his old age, made no effort to fight it off. Instead he chose to take his life into his old, ever so slightly shaken hands. He fired his bow into the sky and landed a final blow to his forehead, finishing him off. Other blows landed to his shoulder, chest, back and metal foot, but the one between his eyes was the one that finished him.</p><p>
  <em>Gathered imaging on photosites.</em>
</p><p>Xisuma begged that to be the end, for the infection to have died off when his friends did, but that was only the start. Jessassin, False, Wels and Stress came to Xisuma at different points of the day after TFC was pronounced dead by the horrified ConVex duo, who acted as plague doctors during the outbreak. Their ties to the Vex prevented them from sharing the sickness. Jess came to Xisuma with a cough that turned into throwing up blood along with ever meal he had ever eaten. False's skin was turning gray and puffing up. Wels was carried by Stress, a shock to all that she can lift him in his full suit of armor, couldn't feel anything below his waist and when she got to the second medical tent, she collapsed there as well. Eventually all four of them died. The ice queen never woke up after taking the knight to the admin and the Vex pronounced her dead moments after her collapse. Next was Jess, who coughed up more and more blood until eventually more of his blood volume was outside of his body than inside. Scans showed he had no brain activity, even though his heart was still beating. Cub inhaled and stuck a short dagger into the back of his head, "there's no coming back from this," he explained as they watched the life drain from his body. Wels and False fought for as long as they could and eventually False even appeared to be getting better, but over the third night they both took a turn for the worst and both died in their sleep.</p><p>
  <em>A sensor, small like a tooth</em>
</p><p>Within the next week, four more innocent lives fell victim to the infection, when there was nothing that Xisuma could do but watch from the shadows. Cub suggested sharing the Vex magic with everyone, but Scar remembered to point out the downsides of the powers that came in the form of Dissociative Fugue and a temper no mortal could control. Xisuma thought it better to try to work admin magic. How he wished he could take it all back when he saw what his magic did to Cleo. She had come in with light symptoms of the infection, but most of them couldn't infect her already infested form. The admin thought that it was best to try the shoddy magic on a patient who would have higher success of surviving anyway. If it would work for Cleo, he told himself, it could work for them all. But the silver shine of the magic through her green and blue toned skin had an effect that nobody expected. She melted, turned into a puddle of goop right in front of the ConVex, Xisuma and Doc, who had just come in with dizziness and nausea. Upon seeing the nasty sight of his friend's liquefied remains of his friend, his guts spilled from his throat and out his mouth, showing the blood and gunpowder mix of the cyborg Creeper. He was seated in te chair that Python was in when he dyed, but all he could smell was death. He begged to just have someone make the pain go away but Xisuma got a call from Iskall that was emergent. "Zed just blacked out in my base," he explained when the admin, Scar and Cub flew out to get them. And then they noticed the silver around his skin in places that weren't normally metallic. Zedaph was dead on arrival, but they got there in time to make sure Iskall got to the tent. When they got there, Impulse was sitting next to Doc and they were asleep, at least Xisuma hoped they were asleep, holding hands as a final embrace. None of them made it to the next morning.</p><p>
  <em>Records in stages, pixel pages of truth (still focus).</em>
</p><p>Over time those who remained alive were either hidden in bunkers or had killed themselves in stupid accidental ways. The void walker could just remember reading the messages. He remembered reading that Cub and Scar couldn't handle everything going on and the loss of everyone so their synchronized deaths by the same swallowed mixture of potions that pushed the pair over the edge. Grian died to the infection in Mumbo's lanky arms. Beef and Etho had traveled off the grid long before everything bad had happened, but when their death messages popped up about ten minutes apart, almost certainly from the infection that had reached them out in the middle of nowhere. Bdubs was killed by Keralis using a trident. Keralis was killed by Tango with a diamond sword. Jevin smashed into an abandoned building and his body was crushed beyond even recognition. Ren dyed from the infection, a half finished message sent to the chat saying "I love you dudes, you were the best I could ha-". Joe helped him send his last message, traveling and helping take care of each of the dead as they passed. Hypno passed in his sleep, Joe explained in the chat. Tango's and xB's death messages happened together and finally Joe reached out to the last remaining Hermits. Himself, Xisuma and Mumbo. They agreed to meet up at the center of town.</p><p>Once the trio were there, the admin without his helmet this time, they looked each other up and down. Mumbo seemed to be in the worst condition of the trio, Xisuma seemed to be protected by his admin magic and Joe looked to be on the last of his reserves for powers.</p><p>
  <em>Oh, a life stopped in pose in a world that</em>
</p><p>There was a little bit of a greeting between them, but Mumbo just started coughing into his now-red handkerchief. Joe and Xisuma shared a look and knew what the redstone engineer would be asking when he finally stopped hacking up his organs. "Please," he sobbed out and connected his eyes to both of the duo. Joe wrapped an arm around his abdomen, gently coughing and turning away from the last remaining friends. Mumbo was too scared to die naturally over time but too weak to take his own life and so he begged, tears and snot mixing with blood and other chunks of, what can only be assumed as, vomit staining his face and once pristine suit. As the poet was curled over in his own deadly infection, this left only the admin to take the young man's life and cut it short. He nodded and he held his arms out in a T Pose, a little smile as he was impaled and a ding rang through the two remaining communicators.</p><p>
  <em>Never goes (oh!)</em>
</p><p>Mumbo Jumbo was dead that was all Xisuma's fault. All of this was. He was now crying as Joe gave his final goodbye and sliced into his own throat to stop the pain and sickness in himself. Everyone he loved, all of his friends were dead.</p><hr/><p>
  <em>Time stopped</em>
</p><p>Nothing seemed to be real anymore. He had managed to escape this world and stay comfortably in the void until he figured out a cure for the illness and heal it in himself before it took him as well. But looking around the world that was left behind it was as if nothing had been changed. It was like time itself had stopped and he could see the people of his past there walking about. But, of course, they weren't there. They were long gone.</p><p>
  <em>By a photograph</em>
</p><p>Xisuma's hair, once chestnut it color, had turned silver with stress and time. He could almost hear the sound as the friends would meet and mess around before server-wide meetings. Ren would always walk up singing whatever song was still stuck in his head from his trip over. Scar and Cub would always end up arriving at the same time, even if the duo were on other sides of the world they somehow just ended up walking to the center at about the same time. Normally the admin would start off the meeting, but Joe would always take over as he knew that X was never one for public speaking.</p><p>
  <em>Who cares what happened after? (Still focus)</em>
</p><p>He stood in the center of the dusty town and inhaled deeply, smelling only the sand and dust with a final hint of decay. His friends were long gone and there was no chance they would ever come back. He wanted to fix it, but there was no way that it could be after his mistakes. All of his mistakes. Countless, stupid fuck ups.</p><p>
  <em>Who cares what happened after?</em>
</p><p>After everything, he said to himself silently, pulling off his helmet and dropping it to the ground at his side before falling to his knees. They were almost certainly sliced on the sharp ground, but he was too far gone to feel anything on his body. Tears fell from eyes that were too tired to care about the little drops that fell into the red sand.</p><p>
  <em>(I am running, I am, I am running)</em>
</p><p>He grabbed his helmet and inhaled deeply one last time, taking a breath that he knew would be his final one. His helmet slid onto his head and he strapped it under his chin.</p><p>
  <em>Who cares what happened after?</em>
</p><p>"System," Xisuma said to the speaker in his helmet that connected to the world around him. "Ban Xisuma."</p><p>
  <em>Focus!</em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>That ominous tag and note at the beginning is NOT for a Hermit, they have done nothing wrong and I would (and will) die for them. That is for my friend who told me to fuck of and said they would block me if I killed Mumbo in any fic in this miniseries. So strap in homos its Mumbo Murder time.</p><p>To those who can't read, this is a song fic for the first song from the musical 35MM: Stop Time. I will be turning this into a little song fic series to help my brain not turn to goo, so strap in this is a FUCKED series.</p><p>Oh also, if you want to find me, I'm on Quotev and Discord and Tumblr sorta so please talk to me I'm so bored homies.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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